My Journey to Wellness

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Surveying the Land

Going be honest here–the last few weeks have been pretty stinky. I hit the proverbial wall and didn’t really want to try anymore–I was eating (mostly) okay and (sort of) exercising, but not taking care of myself the way that I have been. Burnout inevitably comes when we’re going full steam ahead and not incorporating lifestyle changes into your life in a reasonable way. I know this, yet I let myself get to that point. I thankfully haven’t gained any weight in this period of discontent, but I easily could have.

I had to spend an overnight in Las Vegas last week because I couldn’t get my specialist appointments on the same day because of their surgery schedules, so I used a free hotel night we’ve wracked up to stay in town while hubby held down the fort at home. I used this time as my own personal retreat. I packed all of my own foods so I wouldn’t have to leave the hotel, and took that time to spend on me. I rested (like dropped for a several hour nap the moment I checked in), exercised, spent some time with some of my personal development/behavior modification work that I’m doing, and just took time to think and breathe.

I came to the realization that I’m pushing myself to change overnight, when I know that is not possible. I have been engaging in excessive exercise to try and lose weight faster, but that is only providing more rest days than moderate, reasonable exercise because I’m pushing my limits too far. I am piling too much pressure on myself to be where I want to be and not be content with where I am now, which is night and day from where I was when I started. I’m beating myself up over a lot of things that are beyond my realm of control.

So…where do I go from here?

Slow down, take a deep breath. Small steps forward.

This week has gone light years better than the last 2-3. I have really tightened up my nutrition and food choices, really taking the time to think through decisions and not allowing myself to make any justifications on why I “deserve” something that I really don’t need to be ingesting. I have ramped down my exercise to a more reasonable, yet still beneficial, level, and will slowly reincorporate some other things into my workout routine over the next several weeks to find a good medium of challenging but not damaging to my body or psyche.

Here’s my twisted thinking–I thought by doing these things and taking care of myself that I was somehow “failing” myself by cutting myself some slack and fitting living life back into a healthy lifestyle. How messed up is that? Even though I’ve had to do battle with my diseased mind, I am grateful that I have stuck to my guns on these changes this week, because by incorporating these changes, I’m on par to bust the plateau that I’ve been sitting on weight-wise for the last month or so by the end of this week when I weigh-in.

Patience. It really is a virtue. It’s one I don’t have. I know improving myself is a long-time, gradual, lifetime journey. It’s making my mind understand that sometimes that is the hard part. I get so trapped in the moment that it is so hard to me to look at the big picture. I have to physically stop myself and focus on where I started at–so broken and miserable, barely able to move in the prison of my own making in my body to where I am today in just a relatively short time. I am healthier, far happier, and don’t have the same doom and gloom aura about myself. It will only get better from here as long as I continue to rely on God and not my own mind. I haven’t made it this far alone and of my own will. God has led me, cheered me, inspired me, encouraged me, and even dragged me by the hand kicking and screaming.

As much as I want the changes in my life to be a perfectly sloping graph, that’s not reality. It’s full of peaks and valleys and plateaus and that has to be okay–because it’s not going to cease being that way just because of what I want. I have yet to find someone who has found the journey to bettering themselves mind, body, and soul to be one of ease. So, it’s clutching to the roller coaster of life for me, not knowing the next climb or drop–but confident that I will make it through because I’ve made the choice to be on the ride.